Effective University Finance Labs: Why Socialization Might Trump Technical Resources

Despite the difficulty of obtaining an investment banking job as a student at the University of Illinois, more and more students in the last two years have been breaking the mold. My research focuses on what has caused the shift. What I am beginning to discover is that these students have created a close-knit community of peers, friends and sometimes rivals (in the case that the students are interviewing for the same job) supported by a physical, territorial space that they occupy constantly and exclusively in the corner of the Business Instructional Facility. Beyond the technical advantages the lab offers, it is a place for these students to socialize, work and mimic the sometimes extreme lifestyle and work ethic of bankers in the skyscrapers of Chicago and Wall Street. The mutual peer pressure in this space may be helping them to harbor attitudes and behaviors of prestige, which may be more critical in preparing the students for the investment banking industry than the technical resources themselves.unpublishednot peer reviewe